The crown lay where no crown should — not on a brow, not on velvet, not locked behind glass, but flat on the bare floor like a dead spider waiting for warmth. Its black metal drank the light of Nimu’s refuge. No voice came from it, no whisper troubled the air, and still everyone near it felt the press of that silence. They had already learned the hard way that its silence meant nothing safe.

Elora watched it through narrowed eyes, her thoughts going round and round. The thing had reached for hands before. It had crowned Thorn against his will, or close enough to it, and dragged sight and mind toward places no sane mortal goes wandering. Maledurk had felt the pull of it. Nimu had nearly been swallowed whole. Even now, with the danger plain in front of them, it was absurdly easy to picture someone stooping down, touching it, lifting it — just to see.

“Cover it,” someone muttered. The idea was almost funny, and it was a comfort all the same. A blanket thrown over a serpent beats a serpent in plain sight.

But cloth and dark were not the whole of it. The real question was not how to carry the crown but whether they should carry it at all. Nimu, still shaken by what it had worked through her, did not want it left in her keeping. Her magic was strong enough in its own fashion, but it had never been made for jailing things, or for hiding them from eyes she couldn’t see. She could raise wards to blunt a watcher’s scrying, she said — but she would not swear to anything she couldn’t swear to.

Elora’s mind kept worrying at the harder shape of it. If the crown watched, how did it watch? How far did its hearing carry, if it heard at all? And if it truly longed for a way home, the way everything hinted, what might it do the moment they set it down and walked away? Burying it under a mountain had a certain appeal — stone overhead, leagues of dark between it and any living hand. But distance had never been the same thing as safety, and she knew it. Things with a will in them find roads where none were ever laid. A relic forgotten in one century becomes a pilgrim’s death in the next, or a miner’s lucky find, or the seed of some king’s madness.

Thorn turned it over with his usual edge, feeling for the line between what was possible and what was dangerous. There were the ordinary kinds of magical spying. Scrying, where some distant watcher gazes down on a person or a place. Hidden senses fixed to an object, sentinels no eye would ever catch. But this crown did not have the feel of a mere tool. A sensor, perhaps — or perhaps something far worse and harder to ward against, something with a fragment of will folded into it. A shard of thought. A sliver of some greater thing that could see and hear and carry word home, not because a spell commanded it but because it was alive enough to want to.

So the choices forked badly. Blind it with a box and you’ve done nothing if it hears. Stop its ears with cloth and leather and you’ve done nothing if it’s bound to a mind that already knows their faces — leave that behind and they’d still be watched. Keep it close, though, and you invite temptation, theft, and whatever slow weight it might lean against a person’s spirit over a long enough road.

A lead-lined box was the first sensible answer. Lead is an ugly, practical metal, the kind mages respect precisely because it makes such a blunt argument against subtler powers. A box lined with it wouldn’t solve everything. It would smother a good deal of ordinary magic, though, and it would turn the crown from a crown into a dead weight — which suited everyone’s mood about then.

That settled, they took their leave of Nimu. She thanked them with the heavy gratitude of someone pulled back from a danger and from herself in the same motion, and offered what help she could in the days ahead, should they learn more and come back to her. But the relief in her eyes when the crown went out the door was plain enough, and nobody held it against her.

By the power of their teleportation rod, the world folded around them.

Waterdeep took them in the way it always did — vast and loud and heavy with old ambition. The city was far too large to be impressed by anyone’s hurry. Its towers stood with the calm arrogance of places that had outlived wars. Temples chimed the hours, cart wheels ground over the cobbles, and somewhere, past any doubt, a man was shouting himself hoarse about fish or coin or a betrayal that mattered to no one but him.

For a moment the homecoming had a strange ache to it. The Yawning Portal was where so much of this had started, and Trollskull Alley was still half refuge and half inheritance — a reminder that their lives had once been dangerous in much simpler ways. Now they came carrying a crown out of a lich’s tomb, chasing the shadow of a thing that might threaten more than one world.

They went to Blackstaff Tower.

The Blackstaff received them — not as fools with a campfire tale, but as adventurers whose strangest claims had earned a hearing. They told her about the crown, about Knogbrüth, about the growing sense that something old and patient had begun to move. What they couldn’t tell her was its shape, and that was the worst of it. A monster with claws, you meet with steel. A tyrant under his banners, you can at least name. This was only a pressure somewhere out in the dark, a will turning the whole world over from an angle no one could find.

She listened. She had never heard of the Black Crown, nor of Knogbrüth in any way that helped, but she didn’t wave them off. The strangest stories to cross her desk of late, she admitted, had all come from this same company. There were other reports too — scattered enough to dismiss one at a time. Small settlements in far places, struck. Giants in one account, dragons in another. Never together, never in any pattern you could put a finger on. The sort of thing that simply happens in the wild country beyond civilized walls.

Now, in the shadow of their story, even ordinary disasters seemed worth a second look.

She promised to reach through her network and gather what she could about those distant raids. Old cruelties of the world, as ever — or the first symptoms of something far wider waking up?

It was deeper sight that troubled Elora most. She asked, not for prophecy exactly, but for someone who could feel the unusual before it broke the surface — someone who read disturbances in the weave of things. Not a teller of fortunes. A reader of tides no common eye would ever see.

At that, something shifted in the Blackstaff’s face. Only a little: a hitch, a guardedness drawn quickly shut again. Thorn caught it, and so did Elora. Maledurk, whose mind had already wandered off toward warmer and nearer comforts, missed it entirely. But the pause was enough.

Pressed — gently — she gave up a name. Maelthorn Veyr.

A wizard of the old kind, she said. One who had pulled back from cities and courts and schools into a tower of his own making, well away from any easy company. Wizards who do that tend to claim it’s for study, and once in a while that’s even the truth of it. But a few centuries alone bends the mind toward the oldest hunger in all of mortal magic — the flat refusal to die. The road from lonely genius to necromancer has been worn smooth by men exactly like him.

She didn’t accuse Veyr of that, not in so many words. She didn’t pretend it away either.

What mattered was what he’d once been famous for. Veyr could see across the planes. He could feel the weak places between one reality and the next, read the strain along the seam where two worlds pressed against each other. If something vast were hunting its way home, he might be one of the few living minds able to pick out its trail.

His tower stood far to the south and east, past Baldur’s Gate, east of the town of Greenest. Not in Greenest, naturally — wizards like Veyr don’t raise their towers where the neighbors can grumble about strange lights in the sky.

Before any of that, though, they wanted knowledge closer to hand. The Blackstaff sent them to the Font of Knowledge, temple of Oghma and the greatest library in the city. There, among the quiet aisles and the low murmur of monks and scholars at their work, Elora set about turning fear into something more like fact.

The days that followed weren’t idle, even if they had none of the clean drama of a fight. Days of dust and ink. Old names in older hands. Maps with borders redrawn so often the kingdoms on them looked like waves, rising and breaking and gone. Elora went through the histories. Thorn ran down references and the places where one contradicted another. The others helped as they could, though Maledurk’s patience for ancient chronicles stretched only as far as loyalty would carry it and not an inch further.

At last the name Knogbrüth stopped being a thing out of a tomb.

He had been a king, centuries back, in a land far to the east — past the edge of any map they had to hand. His reign had not ended gently. The histories told of his defeat, his army broken, his enemies rising up to cast him down. They didn’t have the whole of the story yet, but the outline alone was enough to cool the blood. The crown they were carrying might be no lich’s leaving at all. It might be what remained of a fallen king whose ruin had simply not gone deep enough.

The monks agreed to keep searching, though more would come slowly. The histories of distant kingdoms lay scattered through old texts and worse translations, through water-damaged accounts and the proud lies of the men who’d won. So they made arrangements. Whatever the scholars turned up would go to the Blackstaff, and from her it would reach the party by magic — a sensible plan, which was almost reason enough to distrust it.

There was talk of splitting up. Elora might stay behind with the books while the rest went south. But the road ahead was no errand. Veyr’s tower would be no pleasant afternoon call, and nobody much liked the thought of leaving one of their own alone in the city while the others vanished down the coast. Planes and prisons and curses had already pulled them apart more than once. They’d learned what it was worth to stay together.

And still there was the crown.

Waterdeep had places of safety, or at least places safer than a traveling pack. Trollskull Manor stood under the eye of old friends. The hidden vault beneath the city, reached by ways Maledurk remembered with no small pride, could have kept the crown in secret. A lead-lined box in a sealed vault under Waterdeep was no poor answer.

But the crown was also the only thread they had into the whole mystery. It had opened visions once; it might again. Veyr might read something in it that no book could teach. And at the worst hour, it might turn out to be the key to reaching the enemy they still couldn’t name.

So they chose to bring it.

Not bare, and not carelessly. First they bought the box — close-fitted and heavy, the kind of thing made for dangerous cargo by people who’d long ago worked out that dangerous cargo pays well. The crown went in untouched, moved by magic rather than by anyone’s fingers, and even sealed away it left the air around it feeling heavier than air had any right to.

Then came the greater protections. In Waterdeep, coin and a good name open strange doors. They came away with a bag of holding, that impossible little sack whose inside makes a mockery of its outside. Stranger still, Elora took charge of a portable hole — a folded circle of pure night that, spread flat on any surface, opened into a small room set outside the world. Elegant, absurd, and dangerous in the exact way that powerful magic usually is.

The dangers got spelled out plainly. Such spaces will not abide being folded one inside the other. A bag of holding dropped into a portable hole, or the reverse, tears both enchantments open at once and rips a gate into the Astral Plane — and away go fools and heroes and villains and furniture alike, off into silver exile.

This did not inspire only caution. It also inspired that particular brand of silence in which adventurers quietly work out how one might drop a lich into an impossible hole. Maledurk, to his credit, looked rather more curious than alarmed.

Tempest, of course, wanted to know how the portable hole actually worked. The experiment involved her frying pan. Laid open, the hole was a black ring on the floor, a doorway down into a round little chamber. Tempest dropped the pan in and climbed down after it like a woman fishing a spoon out from under a table, not someone stepping into a fold of unmade space — and a moment later came back up with the pan in hand, thoroughly pleased. The hole worked. The pan had survived. By Tempest’s standards, that was a complete and rigorous experiment.

After that they handled the thing with a mix of respect and mischief. It could swallow bulky cargo. It could be set against a floor or a wall. It held air only so long, and there was no climbing out if someone outside folded it shut — useful and deadly at once, the kind of object that would either save their lives or knot them up past all reason.

The last arrangement was made slowly and on purpose. The crown in its lead would ride inside the portable hole. The hole, folded up, would travel well apart from the bag of holding, and the bag would carry everything else. Everyone understood the single rule that actually mattered: never let the two impossible spaces touch.

So burdened — relic and box and hole and bag, heads full of warnings and half-made plans — they came back to Blackstaff Tower, where the teleportation circle stood ready for Baldur’s Gate. The magic took them south in a single breath.

Baldur’s Gate rose around them, hard-edged and restless, and they didn’t linger in it. Candlekeep was not impossibly far, and its shelves might hold lore on the crown, on the planes, on the unseen wound between worlds. But Veyr’s name had its hook in them now. The wizard who’d once looked across realities might say what the books couldn’t yet manage — or he might be one more danger wearing the face of an answer. So they chose Greenest first.

The road from Baldur’s Gate ran on ahead, ordinary in all the ways that make a road worth distrusting. A week’s travel, the Blackstaff had said, through settled country along well-known ways. No enchanted forest, no cursed waste, nothing of any great peril by reputation. But plain roads had carried them into terrible places before, and they knew it.

Behind them, the scholars of Waterdeep took up their slow chase after dead histories. Ahead, somewhere past Greenest, an old wizard’s tower waited under open sky. And between the two, the party carried a crown that had outlasted a king, a war, a tomb, and maybe death itself.

It lay now in a dark deeper than any pack could offer — boxed in lead, hidden inside a folded wound in the world. It could not see them. It should not hear them. It had no way to know the road under their boots or the suspicions they carried in their chests.

And yet, the further south they rode, the harder it was not to imagine that somewhere, in some other place, something very old had noticed the silence where its eye used to be — and had begun, patiently, to listen for another way home.

Session Notes

  • The party began by reviewing their current situation: they still had the black crown recovered from the tomb of the lich Nogruth, and it was sitting on the floor in front of them.

    • They had been discussing what to do next after learning that the crown seemed to have a powerful presence or will behind it.
    • They had previously considered returning to Waterdeep to do research and possibly gather allies.
    • They were not yet certain what force they were truly facing.

  • Elora suggested covering the crown with a blanket, but the group quickly shifted toward discussing how to store it safely.

    • The party considered whether to bring the crown with them to Waterdeep or leave it behind with Nimu.
    • The concern was that the crown, or the entity connected to it, might be observing them or listening to their plans.

  • The party asked Nimu whether there was a way to leave the crown with her under some kind of protective spell that would prevent it from observing anything.

    • Nimu said such protections might be possible, but that this was not an area of magic in which she was skilled.
    • She also said she did not want to keep the crown after what had happened, because she feared it might take control of her again.

  • The group reviewed how the crown had behaved so far.

    • The crown had previously been carried in Maledurk’s backpack.
    • Maledurk had felt a slight pull from it, especially whenever he entered the glade with the tree.
    • The crown seemed not to want to enter the glade, or perhaps something in the glade was preventing it from entering.
    • Elora noted that nobody had physically touched the crown after removing it from Thorn; they had used Mage Hand to move it.

  • Elora asked whether burying the crown deep under a mountain, possibly with an enchantment around it, would protect the party from magical observation.

    • An Arcana check was made, with a result of 25.
    • The party learned that magical observation generally takes two common forms.
    • The first is scrying, where a caster uses magic to observe a person or place remotely, such as through a mirror or crystal ball.
    • The second is a magical sensor, which functions like an invisible security camera placed somewhere for a caster to later observe.
    • The crown might be functioning like a magical sensor, potentially providing sight or sound to someone or something else.
    • Usually such magic provides either sight or sound, not both, though more powerful magic could do more.

  • The Arcana check also raised a more disturbing possibility.

    • If the crown was part of a more powerful being, it might not merely be enchanted.
    • It might contain a portion of a conscious entity, or the item itself might be alive or aware.
    • It might be reporting information back to another being.

  • The party concluded that if the crown were not physically near them, it likely would not be able to observe them directly.

    • If they left it somewhere and walked away, the crown itself probably would not gather information about them.
    • However, if someone or something already knew the party through the crown, that entity might now be able to scry on them even without the crown nearby.

  • The group discussed the danger of the crown’s influence.

    • The main concern was not merely being watched, but that the crown tempted people to pick it up or put it on.
    • Maledurk had put it on by choice.
    • Nimu also seemed to have been drawn to it.
    • The crown appeared to exert at least a mild pull on people even before they touched it.

  • The group considered putting the crown into a dark box.

    • If the crown could only see, being in a backpack or dark box might block its observation.
    • If it could hear, a backpack alone would not solve the problem.
    • They wondered whether a box would suppress the crown’s magical influence.

  • The party learned that a lead-lined box would usually prevent magical influence from escaping.

    • Lead was described as a standard way to contain dangerous magical items.
    • The party joked briefly about lead and kryptonite, but concluded that a lead-lined container would be useful.
    • They did not currently have such a box, but it was something they could likely obtain in Waterdeep.

  • The party decided to return to Waterdeep.

    • Nimu thanked them for their help and said she was glad to have met them.
    • She agreed to help them further if she could.
    • She invited them to return and discuss matters with her as needed.

  • The party used their teleportation wand to travel to Waterdeep.

    • They considered where in Waterdeep to arrive.
    • They discussed the Yawning Portal, where their earliest adventures had begun.
    • They also recalled Trollskull Alley, where they had their own place.
    • Since they wanted to conduct magical and historical research, they focused on the area near Blackstaff Tower and the Font of Knowledge.

  • The party reviewed what they knew about Waterdeep.

    • Blackstaff Tower was associated with the Blackstaff, the title held by the city’s leading wizard.
    • The Blackstaff was not the civil ruler of Waterdeep, but was responsible for much of the city’s magical authority and defense.
    • Waterdeep was protected by powerful enchantments, including magic that prevented dragons from entering the city.
    • Maledurk asked how he could enter if dragons were barred, and it was clarified that dragonborn are not dragons.

  • The party went to Blackstaff Tower.

    • They met with Vajra Safahr, the current Blackstaff of Waterdeep.
    • She welcomed them and asked how she could help.

  • The party explained their situation to Vajra.

    • They told her about their current quest.
    • They explained that they suspected a major threat to the plane of existence.
    • They asked what she knew, whether she could direct them to places or people who might help with research, and whether she could help them find allies.

  • Vajra believed the party, but she did not already know about the black crown or the lich Nogruth.

    • She said she could begin looking through her own texts for information.
    • She suggested that the party search the Font of Knowledge.
    • The Font of Knowledge was described as a temple to Oghma, god of knowledge, and also the largest library in Waterdeep.

  • The party asked Vajra whether she had heard of any disturbances or signs that matched the danger they suspected.

    • Vajra said the strangest stories she had heard had come from the party themselves.
    • She had heard reports of small towns in remote areas being attacked.
    • Some attacks were by giants, and others by dragons.
    • She had not previously connected those incidents to a greater threat, since such dangers sometimes occur on the edges of civilization.
    • She agreed to use her network to gather more details and see whether the attacks had anything unusual in common.

  • The party asked whether Vajra knew anyone with a special kind of magical awareness.

    • They first described this as someone like an empathic wizard who could sense a brewing storm of evil.
    • They clarified that they were not necessarily asking for prophecy or foresight.
    • They wanted someone who could detect unusual disturbances, cosmic imbalances, planar weaknesses, or other signs that something was wrong beyond ordinary magical concerns.
    • They described this as someone who might notice “disturbances in the force” or trails left by a powerful movement through reality.

  • Vajra considered the question carefully.

    • Thorn and Elora noticed that she seemed to think of someone but was reluctant to say so.
    • Maledurk made an Insight check but was distracted and did not notice this.
    • Vajra initially said that no one in her organization had that kind of foresight or awareness.

  • The party pressed Vajra for the information she seemed to be withholding.

    • Thorn asked bluntly what she was holding back.
    • Maledurk was not persuasive and seemed somewhat confused by the exchange.
    • Elora softened the request and made a more effective appeal.
    • Vajra agreed to reveal what she knew.

  • Vajra told the party about a wizard named Maelthorn Veyr.

    • Veyr was not in Waterdeep.
    • Vajra described him as one of the old style of wizards: someone with a tower in the middle of nowhere who spent his time researching in isolation.
    • She was wary of wizards like that because they often try to discover ways to live forever.
    • She explained that such obsessions often lead wizards toward necromancy and undeath.
    • She compared that kind of path to liches such as Nogruth and Acererak, whom the party had faced during the events surrounding the death curse in Chult.
    • She clarified that Strahd also sought a way to preserve himself, though he was not the same kind of formally trained wizard.

  • Vajra said she did not know for certain that Veyr had turned to evil or undeath.

    • She did not know what he was currently doing.
    • However, he fit the dangerous profile of an isolated, extremely old wizard who had spent centuries alone in research.

  • Vajra explained why Veyr might be relevant.

    • He had once been renowned for his ability to see into the multiverse.
    • He could look across planes of existence.
    • He could sense weaknesses between realities.
    • His expertise seemed directly connected to the kind of planar disturbance the party feared.

  • Vajra told the party where to find Veyr.

    • His tower was east of the town of Greenest.
    • Greenest was far south of Waterdeep.
    • The tower was not in the town itself, but people living near wizard towers usually knew where those towers were.

  • The party discussed their next course of action.

    • Thorn suggested that Elora should research at the Font of Knowledge before the group set out on a longer journey.
    • The party also discussed whether they should split up, with Elora remaining in Waterdeep to research while others went south to find Veyr.
    • The idea was rejected as impractical and unsafe.
    • From a practical adventuring standpoint, the group decided it was better to stay together.

  • The party reviewed travel options.

    • Their teleportation wand could take them instantly to places they had already been.
    • It could not safely or reliably take them to a place they had never visited.
    • Vajra explained that there was a network of teleportation circles that could get them to Baldur’s Gate.
    • From Baldur’s Gate, they could travel by road toward Greenest.
    • The journey from Baldur’s Gate to Greenest would be much shorter than traveling from Waterdeep on foot.

  • The party also considered Candlekeep.

    • Candlekeep was a well-known repository of magical knowledge located near the route south.
    • Waterdeep would likely be better for historical research.
    • Candlekeep might be better for specialized magical research, especially concerning the crown or planar matters.
    • The party did not decide to go there immediately, but recognized it as a possible future research stop.

  • Elora mentioned possible communication magic.

    • Animal Messenger was discussed, but it would be limited by the speed of the animal carrying the message.
    • Sending was identified as the better option for long-distance communication, because it could deliver short magical messages to known recipients almost anywhere.
    • The party arranged for continued research in Waterdeep to be communicated through Vajra and her resources.

  • The party went to the Font of Knowledge to begin research.

    • Elora led the research effort.
    • The relevant checks were History or Investigation.
    • Elora rolled well, with a result of 21.
    • Other party members could assist with their own History or Investigation checks.

  • The party spent a couple of days in Waterdeep researching.

    • During that time, they searched the Font of Knowledge for information about Nogruth.
    • They found some information, though not yet much detail.
    • Nogruth had been a king many centuries ago.
    • His kingdom was in a faraway region far to the east, beyond the area shown on the current map.
    • The kingdom had existed on the same plane of existence as the party.
    • The historical account suggested that Nogruth had been defeated, killed, and his army destroyed.

  • The research confirmed that the place connected to Nogruth was real and part of the world.

    • The lich whose tomb contained the crown was connected to an actual historical kingdom.
    • The party recognized that the crown they carried might indeed be Nogruth’s crown.
    • Further research could reveal more about his kingdom, history, and defeat.

  • The party arranged for the monks and researchers at the Font of Knowledge to continue investigating.

    • They would look for more books and records about Nogruth, his kingdom, and the history surrounding him.
    • Any information they found would be passed to Vajra.
    • Vajra or her wizards could then send magical messages to the party with new findings.

  • The party discussed possible allies.

    • Elora asked Vajra whether she could help gather forces, since the threat seemed powerful enough that the party might need an army.
    • Vajra explained her role in relation to Force Grey and the Grey Hands.
    • The Grey Hands were described as a broader network of adventurers and information-gatherers.
    • Force Grey was an elite subset of that group, essentially a special forces organization.
    • As Blackstaff, Vajra had direct control over Force Grey.

  • Vajra agreed that she believed something serious was happening.

    • She was willing to commit her resources in Force Grey to help the party.
    • However, she explained that broader city leadership would not mobilize without concrete information.
    • The Lords’ Alliance and the rulers of Waterdeep would not commit city resources based only on suspicions or ominous impressions.
    • If the party could obtain clearer evidence of the threat, Vajra could help persuade other factions and leaders to act.

  • Before leaving Waterdeep, the party had to decide what to do with the crown.

    • It was still in Elora’s backpack at that point.
    • The group agreed that carrying it without additional protection was risky.
    • They decided to obtain a lead-lined box for it.
    • Vajra confirmed that getting such a box in Waterdeep would be simple.
    • The party acquired a lead-lined box sized to hold the crown.

  • The party considered whether to leave the crown in Waterdeep.

    • They had access to several potential secure locations.
    • Trollskull Manor was available through their former adventuring companions and their ownership stake.
    • They also had access to the underwater vault where they had previously found the dragon and the treasure.
    • The vault was likely one of the most secure locations they knew.
    • Maledurk mentioned that he knew the sewers well enough to reach it.

  • The group debated whether to bring the crown or store it in the vault.

    • Thorn noted that Veyr might need to examine the crown.
    • They also considered that the crown might be useful if they needed to confront the entity connected to it.
    • Thorn recalled that when he put on the crown, he had entered or experienced a vision more directly than someone who merely observed from outside.
    • The party wondered whether those visions might have shown the historical battles in which Nogruth had been defeated.
    • The crown might provide a connection to Nogruth, his realm, or the force behind the current threat.
    • Because of that, the party leaned toward keeping it with them.

  • Maledurk agreed that the crown might be more useful with the group than hidden away in Waterdeep.

    • He noted that it might help them lure out or locate the enemy.
    • The party decided to take the crown with them.

  • The party considered magical storage options for safely transporting the crown.

    • An Arcana discussion established that several magical options were available.
    • A Bag of Holding could carry far more than its apparent size and reduce the burden of heavy items.
    • A Portable Hole could open into an extradimensional space, allowing objects to be stored outside the current plane of existence.
    • A spell called Drawmij’s Instant Summons could magically mark an item and later summon it, though it would require outside help because the party did not currently know the spell.

  • The party discussed Drawmij’s Instant Summons.

    • The spell would require a gem tied to the target item.
    • If the gem were crushed and the command spoken, the item would appear in the caster’s hand from wherever it was.
    • However, if another creature had taken possession of the item, the spell would not steal it out of that creature’s possession.
    • Instead, the caster would learn who had it and where they were.
    • Because of that limitation, the party was less interested in relying on this method.

  • The party discussed a Bag of Holding.

    • It was compared to a magical bag that could hold far more than it should.
    • To retrieve an item, someone would reach into the bag while thinking of the item they wanted.
    • If the bag were turned inside out, everything inside would spill out.
    • The bag would not be perfectly secure if stolen, but it would make carrying gear and the crown easier.

  • The party discussed a Portable Hole.

    • The Portable Hole was described as a sheet-like item that could be unfolded and placed on a flat surface.
    • It opened into a pocket dimension approximately six feet across and ten feet deep.
    • A person could climb or jump inside it to retrieve items.
    • The hole could then be folded up and carried.
    • There was enough air inside for about an hour if a living creature were trapped within it.
    • It could be placed on a floor, wall, or ceiling.
    • If placed on a ceiling, the party wondered whether items inside might fall out.

  • The party learned about the danger of combining extradimensional storage items.

    • Placing a Bag of Holding inside a Portable Hole, or a Portable Hole inside a Bag of Holding, would destroy both items.
    • It would open a gate to the Astral Plane.
    • Anything within ten feet would be sucked into the Astral Plane.
    • The party recognized this as dangerous but also potentially useful as a last-resort tactic.

  • The party briefly discussed using the Bag of Holding and Portable Hole offensively.

    • They considered whether they could trap or banish an enemy by combining the items.
    • They realized that putting Nogruth or another enemy into the Portable Hole with the crown might accidentally empower that enemy instead of defeating them.
    • They agreed to be careful not to mix the two storage items by accident.

  • The party decided to acquire both a Bag of Holding and a Portable Hole.

    • Thorn took the Bag of Holding.
    • Elora took the Portable Hole.
    • Maledurk did not request another major magic item, saying he was content with lowering his head and running fast.
    • The group joked briefly about magical items, including a magical jug that could produce mayonnaise, but no such item became part of the party’s plan.

  • The party practiced with the Portable Hole.

    • Tempest put or threw her frying pan into the hole.
    • She climbed in after it.
    • A moment later, she climbed back out with the frying pan.
    • This confirmed that the Portable Hole functioned like an accessible extradimensional room.

  • The final storage arrangement for the crown was decided.

    • The crown was placed inside the lead-lined box.
    • The lead-lined box was placed inside the Portable Hole.
    • The Portable Hole was folded up and placed in Elora’s backpack.
    • The Bag of Holding was kept separate, with Thorn carrying it, to avoid any accidental extradimensional disaster.

  • With the crown secured and their preparations complete, the party returned to Blackstaff Tower.

    • Vajra’s people tuned the teleportation circle to Baldur’s Gate.
    • The party stepped through the circle and arrived in Baldur’s Gate.

  • Before ending the session, the party clarified their next destination.

    • They considered whether to go to Candlekeep first or continue toward Greenest.
    • Thorn favored going to Veyr first, reasoning that Veyr might provide clues about what they should research at Candlekeep afterward.
    • The party agreed to head toward Veyr’s tower first.

  • Since there was nothing specific the party wanted to do in Baldur’s Gate, the journey continued from there.

    • The party traveled by road from Baldur’s Gate toward Greenest.
    • The journey took about one week.
    • The session ended with the party set to arrive at Greenest next time, with the intention of seeking Maelthorn Veyr’s tower east of the town.